


The People Moths Don't See

by psocoptera



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, Loss of Parent(s), Real-World Problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 01:06:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17653100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: Do you ever think about who Hawkmoth doesn't akumatize?





	The People Moths Don't See

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains multiple kinds of realistic trauma, all of which happens "offstage". There's discussion of the death of an unnamed adult OC from cancer, mention of implied homophobic remarks, and references to terrorist-type attacks. The details are kept vague and I tried to make sure they wouldn't suggest any of the real tragedies that Paris has faced in recent years, but just imply that these characters live in a Paris that sometimes experiences that kind of violence.
> 
> This story is very much a "characters have a Watsonian struggle with a Doylist problem" sort of thing; obviously I understand that the reason the ML world doesn't have "adult" problems is that it's a kids' show. But, you know, what if someone turned the realism dial up a couple notches but didn't adjust the plot?

"Do you ever think about who Hawkmoth _doesn't_ akumatize?" Ladybug asked.

They were two-thirds of the way up the Eiffel Tower, or maybe one-third of the way down: battle over, jewelry counting down.

"What do you mean?"

"Like, that lady." An American, upset that tickets for the top of the Eiffel Tower were sold out. "She can't actually be having the worst day anyone is having in Paris today."

"Definitely not now that we left her up there," Chat Noir said with a grin and a nod. They often tried to get akuma victims back to where they had been, but it wasn't like they _had_ to.

"No, seriously," Ladybug said. "There are over two million people in Paris. People have car accidents, and... divorces, and hate crimes, really bad things. You don't think they have more negative feelings than a disappointed tourist?"

"So, what," Chat said. "You think Hawkmoth... deliberately gives them a pass? To be _nice_? Sight Seether was throwing people off the Eiffel Tower, if we hadn't caught them all they would have been jelly." 

Ladybug winced. "I don't know." Her earring beeped. Still a few minutes. "My mom... she got a call from an old friend. She's sick. I guess it's really bad. My mom is so angry... I've never seen her like that."

"She's angry at your friend?"

"What? No, she's angry at the cancer. Of course she's not angry at Au - at her friend."

 _Auntie_ , Chat Noir thought. She was going to say _Auntie_. And she'd never mentioned her mom before. It was the biggest piece of herself she'd ever handed him, except for the part about loving someone else.

His ring chirped, but he ignored it.

"Sometimes when something bad happens people stay away from you," he said slowly. "People who used to talk to you look away when you come into the room." Chat Noir shouldn't know anything about that, but Adrien did. "Maybe Hawkmoth is just like anyone else. Maybe he just can't deal with anyone with real pain."

Ladybug put her hand on his arm. Her eyes were so big, so serious. "No one should have to feel like that," she said. "You can talk to me - " Her earring beeped again. Her face fell.

"Thank you," Chat said. "We'd better - "

"Yeah." He watched her swing away, just for a moment. He thought she might have really meant it.

*

Chat Noir sank back against the chimney, groaning. "I hope we never have to do _that_ again."

"I'm going to ask Tikki if Lucky Charm would work in sign language," Ladybug said. She was still on her feet. His dauntless lady.

"I hadn't realized you didn't actually have to say _time to de-evilize_ ," Chat said.

Ladybug shrugged. "I guess it's just a habit."

"Nothing wrong with a catchphrase," Chat said, trying to sound flirtatious, but it came out sounding tired.

"This must have been hard for you," Ladybug said. "Not being able to make jokes."

 _Not as hard as having to take down an akuma without Cataclysm or Lucky Charm_ , Chat thought. Not that he would ever say that, after she had fought so brilliantly and resolutely.

"It was lonely," he said instead. Of course she had been right there next to him, directing him with glances and gestures, but he had felt trapped in his own head the whole time they fought Wordless.

"I'm sorry," Ladybug said. She stepped a little closer, until their toes were almost touching.

"I guess the boy who got akumatized was upset because someone said something nasty to his sister and her girlfriend," Ladybug added. "Why him? Why not the sister, or the girlfriend?"

"Maybe he was more upset about it," Chat suggested.

"They were pretty upset," Ladybug said darkly.

"Maybe because they had both been akumatized before," Chat said, without thinking about whether he was supposed to know that. Ladybug didn't seem to take any note of him knowing it, though.

"I don't know," Ladybug said. "I wonder if Hawkmoth could only handle it secondhand."

Adrien knew about that. Photographers who would ask Nathalie how he was doing, but never ask _him_.

"How is your mother's friend?" he remembered to ask.

Ladybug startled, and then visibly softened, like just for a moment she could stand down from Ladybug readiness.

"She's hanging in there," she said. "Thank you, Chat Noir."

Her earring beeped, and she was gone; Chat Noir slumped against the chimney for another minute, and followed.

*

Whenever something bad happened, something that got a hashtag and everyone talking about it, Adrien would find himself holding his breath, even if he was only hearing about something already over. There was a hostage crisis at a bank, and he tried to picture what would happen if an akuma had gotten one of the hostages, or the gunmen. If a gunman fired at an akumatized hostage, could Miraculous Ladybug bring back any other hostages who got shot too? How much more dangerous would an akuma with a gun be than any other akuma? There was a panic on the Metro, over what some people were claiming was a gas attack and the authorities insisted was an accident. Would breathing through his staff protect Chat Noir from gas, if he'd had to go down there because Hawkmoth picked some terrified kid to make things worse?

Meanwhile they fought an akuma who turned people into jigsaw puzzles, an akuma who made people's hair grow extremely long and then fall out completely, and an akuma who gave people giant frog legs. The frog legs had been okay - they jumped even better than Chat Noir could normally jump in the suit, and he'd had fun climbing straight up walls with the sticky toes. And he had thought he and Ladybug had both looked fantastic with Rapunzel hair, even if it had made it harder to fight.

"Does it ever seem weird to you that tourists keep coming here despite the akumas?" he asked Ladybug after the frog-legs akuma. She hadn't enjoyed it as much as he had. "Milan is pretty nice and nobody ever gets turned into anything."

Ladybug frowned. "People don't stop coming here after bombings, and those don't get undone."

"I'm not saying I want people to be scared," Chat said, holding up his hands. "But shouldn't akumas be more than just a hassle? Attention aux pickpockets et akumas?" He made a face.

"Maybe that means we're winning," Ladybug said. "If everyone knows there are worse things than Hawkmoth."

 _Maybe it means that it won't really make a difference to anyone when we finally beat him_ , Chat thought, but his ring chirped and he vaulted away with a wave and an au revoir instead. She was right, of course. Why did he want Hawkmoth to be worse? Wasn't that what he was scared of?

*

No akuma, for once, but Adrien spotted Ladybug silhouetted on a rooftop, and couldn't resist transforming to join her.

"What brings you up here, my - " he started, but then she turned around, and he could see she'd been crying. "Are you okay?"

She wiped her eyes. "We just got back from a funeral," she said, a little sniffly.

"Oh no," Chat said. "Your mother's friend?" And then panicked; what if it wasn't, and he was just reminding her... but she nodded. "I'm so sorry."

Ladybug nodded again. Maybe she had wanted to be alone, Chat thought, maybe he should leave her alone. But he knew what he always wanted when he felt like that.

"Hug?" he asked, opening his arms.

"Yeah," she said softly, after a moment, and then she stepped into his arms.

She let him hold her for a long minute, while he closed his eyes and tried to memorize the feeling of her hair against his cheek.

"It was a whole room of angry, sad, heartbroken people," she said into his shoulder. "And no akumas, and it's not like I wanted her funeral to be ruined, but he takes the smallest, pettiest feelings and makes them gigantic and drowning Paris and then when something big happens it doesn't even matter."

 _Of course it matters_ , he wanted to argue, but that wasn't the point.

Adrien sometimes wondered if they would ever have a funeral for his mother, or maybe a memorial service, a remembrance, a celebration of the life of Emilie Agreste. Some kind of point when they decided she was really gone and they weren't still waiting for her to come back and it could finally stop being something awful that was still happening and just be something terrible that had happened. He couldn't really imagine that his father would ever allow it.

"We're going to beat him someday," he said to Ladybug, because if there was one thing he had to believe, that was it: that maybe Adrien had to accept loss, but Chat Noir could win. "No matter who Hawkmoth takes advantage of or who he ignores," he added.

Ladybug pulled away, smiling a little tremulously.

"Okay," she said.

All around their feet, Paris was full of good days and bad days, happy people and sad people. Hawkmoth hated them all, probably, or didn't care, and they were all surviving, or not, in all the places the akumas weren't.


End file.
